


The Knowledge of Somewhere

by unsettled



Category: Sherlock Holmes (2009), Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Angst, Community: sherlockkink, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-04
Updated: 2010-07-04
Packaged: 2017-10-10 09:22:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/98099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unsettled/pseuds/unsettled
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Why did Doyle start writing Sherlock Holmes stories again?</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Knowledge of Somewhere

**Author's Note:**

> From a kink meme prompt – the first four lines are the original prompt. I actually went to bed, and then got up an hour later to start writing.

_"Arthur!" cried Holmes, desperate. "Just because we're characters doesn't mean we don't have_ souls_!"  
Arthur didn't react as he watched the ghostly hands gripping his shoulders, trying to make him stay.  
"Revive me!" he heard his character plead, the hands becoming more and more translucent. "Don't let Watson alone, Ar-"_

_And then he woke up._

Arthur stared into the pale wash of early morning. Good lord, what a dream. He shook his head. Really. Dreaming about his own fictional characters was a first. Dreaming about dead, discarded characters was even stranger. He sighed and closed his eyes again, determined to slip in a few more hours of sleep before the world called, but still, it lingered on the insides of his lids, echoing in his ears. Desperation.

Don't, he wanted to say. Get out of my head. I'm through with you. It had been almost a year since he disposed of Sherlock Holmes and his maddening problems. He had been so sick of writing him, of coming up with wild plots that sounded as though they could actually be solved. He'd thrown him over a cliff into the cemetery of words that never make it to paper.

And what if the public pressed for more? What if they wore bands of mourning, if his publisher still begged for more stories, even one more? He was done with Holmes and Watson, set them aside for his real works, the pieces that would cause his name to be remembered. No detective novel could do that.

He settled himself into the bed, firmly placing such thoughts from his head. Nothing on this earth could compel him to write another Sherlock Holmes novel.

_Please. Don't make him suffer._

Nothing.

*

Charles was nattering on about some scientific notion that made little sense, and Arthur was doing his best to look interested. He was grateful for the interruption of an introduction; a young man, recently from America.

"Dr. Doyle," the young man said, shaking his hand. "I'm a great fan of your work."

Arthur smiled, thinking of his latest book, but the smiled slipped at the man's next words.

"I've always hoped there might be more on Sherlock Holmes from you. Do you think you will ever continue his stories?"

He favored the man with a rather chilly glance. "I'm afraid I've rather lost interest in Sherlock Holmes. I find my current work to be of much greater value, Mr. –?"

"Amoson," he said, slightly flushed. "Frederick Amoson. Of course, Dr. Doyle, no one would wish you to write something you had no interest in. It's a shame though."

Arthur murmured something that could pass for agreement, but still sounded wholly dismissive. Sherlock Holmes. Would the man never cease to haunt him? It had been years, and he answered every query with the same response; no, no, and no, there would be no more Sherlock Holmes. Ever.

A hand settled on his shoulder, a whisper in his ear. _What could I offer you?_

He whirled, but there was no one there.

*

_He is in a room filled to overflowing with odds and ends, the mundane and the bizarre hopelessly jumbled. Before him, seated in a high backed chair, is a man, all pale skin and sharp angles and sharper mind. A familiar man, and Arthur knows what the tone of his voice will be like before he speaks._

_"I thought that might work," the man says, and it was just as he knew it would sound, smooth and low and pinning him in place._

_"You're not real," he tells his creation, this mockery of man that is Sherlock Holmes, who merely raises one dark eyebrow. _

_"I assure you, I am quite real. Rather, it is your reality that I find questionable, despite all the facts that point to it as the singular solution. Do you have any idea what you have done?"_

_"I? What I have done?" and Arthur can see all too easily how such a man could drive others to rage. "I have done nothing, and you, sir, will get out of my head and back where you belong, locked in text. You are quite dead, and I have had enough of such utter silliness."_

_Holmes is on his feet, stalking towards him, his eyes sharp enough to slice the air. "How dare you? How dare you profess innocence? It is your wretched pen that has torn my world apart, and I am still paying for your boorishness!"_

_Arthur is thoroughly fed up with all this, and he closes his eyes. When he opens them, he will be back in bed, and Holmes…_

_His head snaps back at the blow, and he blinks at the man through watering eyes. How, how he could possibly, he isn't real… "You are a character," he tells him, and Holmes' eyes blaze._

_"No," he says." I am far more than a character, than two dimensional words on a page. You have twisted things with your meddling, and I am not the only 'character' suffering!" _

_Arthur flinches back from the venom in Holmes' voice, and this is too much for him. He turns and wrenches open the door, only there is nothing there, no stairs, no carpet, only black space. He tries to catch himself on the door frame, but his fingers slip…_

Arthur wakes, gasping, a swiftly cooling layer of sweat covering him. He shivers, and beside him, his wife makes a small noise. He blinks, and blinks again, each clearing away the remnants of the terrible dream. He is half tempted to go downstairs in search of his copies of the Sherlock Holmes novels, and burn them. He sighs as his heartbeat steadies and slows; no, that would be merely childish.

But the next morning, he does take them all and pile them in a box, which he then stores in an unused cupboard, on a high shelf.

*

_It is the same room, familiar, just as the figure seated in the chair is familiar. He turns, ready to leave before anything can happen. He is sick of dreaming about the dead ends of literature._

_"Wait." And then, softer, pleading, "Please. Just listen to me. I am beginning to think you simply do not understand."_

_Arthur turns back, still tensed to leave, but curious despite himself. "An explanation would be… intriguing, if nothing else," he admits, and Holmes waves him towards a chair. He takes the one across from Holmes, and does not miss the sudden tightness of Holmes' mouth. "Well?"_

_Holmes stares at him for a long moment, his eyes heavily lidded and almost dim. "You have written several stories about my - ; about Holmes and Watson solving cases, have you not?"_

_Arthur snorts. "About Holmes, yes. I would hardly say Watson has any part in solving cases."_

_The nostrils of that long nose flare, but Holmes continues in an even tone. "Presume, for a moment, that your characters actually exist. Never mind the how of it."_

_"But you can not exist. Even if you and the man I write about are one and the same, I killed him off eight years ago. Therefore,_ logically_, you could not be here now!"_

_"Mm." Holmes regards him steadily. "Why did you kill me off?"_

_"I didn't..."_

_"Your character, I mean."_

_Arthur sighs. "I was so sick of writing about him. It's incredibly difficult coming up with cases for him to solve that aren't simple, but still believable. It took time away from more important works." Holmes has gone wide eyed, and his breath seems to have caught, rendering him still as a statue. "What?"_

_Holmes exhales a gust of air, almost a shuddering laugh. "To think that you have caused such havoc, such terrible grief, simply because you bored! My god…" he raises a hand to his face, covering his eyes, and Arthur is struck by his gauntness, by the skeletal quality of that hand._

_"What grief?" he asks, quietly._

_Holmes does not lower his hand. "Understand," he says. "I do not know why, or how, although I am beginning to put together a theory on that, but whatever the reason, your writings have linked themselves to my life. What you write happens, here, and measures taken to prevent it have only a cursory effect. Your pen has become the pen of God, and your words the sacred text of the world."_

_Arthur is speechless. It cannot be; there is no possibility that such a thing is true. Yet his eyes catch now on small details, on things he described in his writing, and more importantly, things he never described in writing, things he might have. He looks back towards the man in the chair, towards Holmes. "Then how is it that you are not dead?"_

_"Luck, I suppose," Holmes replies, the hand sliding from his eyes. "Moriarty threw himself at me in unarmed combat, and slipped on the edge of the falls. I caught myself; he fell. Had it not been for your writings, I would have gone back down to the hotel and joined Watson once more."_

_"I don't understand," Arthur says. "I was done writing. How could I dictate your actions?"_

_Holmes gives him a weary look. "I am not sure, but I could not turn down that path. I _could not_; my feet refused to obey me and turned instead to flee. I have been traveling and hiding here ever since. I cannot send a telegram; it never makes it, through some freak occurrence. If I show up at his door, he is not there. The landlady does not remember me for more than ten minutes, the people in the street move to avoid me without seeing me, the world ticks on thinking I am dead while I live and breathe. You have made me a ghost in my own home. What you write happens; what you do not write, apparently, does not."_

_Arthur feels as though Holmes has stuck him across the face again. "I did not know," he tells Holmes, uncertain if he is apologizing or pleading for forgiveness. "How could I have known it was real?"_

_"I tell myself that," Holmes replies. "That you did not know, because believing that you were aware and uncaring was more than I could bear. But look; now you do know, and now you can fix it."_

_"How?"_

_Holmes fixes him with a commanding gaze. "Write. Give us more stories."_

_Arthur sighs. "They will never leave me to my real work now," he says, more to himself, but Holmes catches it any how. _

_"What can be more real than this?"_

_*_

_"You said you would fix it!"_

Arthur blinks at the blank page before him. Had someone… but no, he was alone. The furor over the new Sherlock Holmes novel had only just dimmed, and he was ready to get back to his histories. There was no reason he should be hearing that familiar voice again. He'd written more, hadn't he? Given them a whole new story.

_"Damn it, you should have fixed it!"_

His head whips around, but still, no one is within sight, and still that voice rings in his head. His mind is spinning, vision blurring, and it is screams of fury that now fill his ears.

_"Do you even know what you have done? What you have allowed to happen? You fool!"_

He raises his hands to ward off the manifestation of rage, and slowly, it fades. He sits, gasping for breath, shaking in every limb. What had happened? He regarded the ink stained paper before him, and gathering his scattered wits, he rose, making his way to the cabinet where he poured himself a drink.

_"Why?"_

He will not sleep tonight.

*

_He blinks at the room, not his room, and oh, he must have fallen asleep after all. The chair is turned away, facing the fire, and Arthur finds himself drawn to it. _

_Holmes is slumped in it, his eyes glazed and distant, watching the flames. He shows no outward sign of noticing Arthur, but "I had wondered if I might see you again," he says, slow, almost slurred._

_Arthur seats himself in the other chair, and Holmes shoots him a sidelong glance. "That was his chair, you know. But of course, you would know; you wrote it."_

_Arthur doesn't quite know how to reconcile this docilely to the towering rage he had been battered with only hours before. He hesitates, uncertain what to say, but Holmes seems willing to fill the silence himself. _

_"It's the cocaine. What allows us to meet; the cocaine, in high enough doses. Skirting the edge of overdose, apparently, is the only place our spheres connect. Fitting, in a way."_

_Arthur can see now, the mottled bruising at the crook of one elbow, and wonders if he was responsible for the addiction as well. Holmes reads him as easily as plain words, and gifts him with a small curl of lips. "One thing you cannot wholly blame yourself for. I was fond of my cocaine before you began dictating our actions."_

_"Dare I ask what has happened?" He falters, and then, almost as an offering, "I did write more, you know."_

_Holmes is very quiet, very still. "Yes," he says finally. "I could feel the memories slotting themselves into place. It was… disconcerting."_

_"Then..."_

_"You were too late." _

_He is silent, unable to form his questions, but Holmes answers them anyways._

_"Ten years is a very long time. I'd feared when his wife died, and the child not much later, but he held on. To what, I do not know. Maybe, despite it all, he still had hope. He knew how devious I could be. I could never stay away from him for any length of time, and he was well aware of that. I wish I knew what moment broke him, what thought drove him..."_

_He is slowing, his words so quiet Arthur can barely hear them, and he listens with every fiber of his being. _

_"Ten years… ten years ago today, you set fateful pen to paper and destroyed us. Oh, John, if you could have known… they found him this morning. Dead by his own hand, and clippings reporting of my death scattering the desk."_

_Arthur draws his breath convulsively, and can only watch helplessly as Sherlock Holmes loses every last scrap of composure before him. If he had only known…_

_He is on his knees before Holmes' chair, his hands stippled with tears as he tries desperately for some solution. "I can fix it, surely. I'll write something new, something where you come back, I can reunite you; it will be as though it never happened…"_

_Holmes silences him with one shake of his head. "No," he says, "I do not think it works that way. Besides, it is too late for both of us. I am headed for a place where there are no second chances."_

_Arthur sees the blue veined arm again, and this time he knows it for what it is. A dose skirting overdose; or in this case, a dose far, far beyond. He closes his eyes, and tries to offer what small comfort he can. "At least you will be together in the afterlife."_

_"No," Holmes whispers, almost contemplative. "I have been headed for hellfire for a long time; John, despite his sins, was always too good for this earth." His breathing has an edge to it, and he summons a sudden energy, grasping Arthur's hand. _

_"Write it," he hisses. "Write it as it should have been. Give some other Sherlock and some other John time to be together. Time to learn the nuances of each other. If I cannot have happiness, let me at least have the knowledge that somewhere else there is love for John Watson."_

_"Yes," Arthur says, and between one breath and the next, Sherlock Holmes is gone._

He wakes, staring into the darkness of late night. In a state akin to a trance, he rises, and clears away the ink stained pages. He settles into the chair, and pen in hand, tears still drying on his face, he begins to write.

*

He writes of cases that are solved, dispatched with a causal twist of the mind, of cases that challenge, and cases that baffle. He creates memories of nights at the opera, of tortured violins, of hastily smothered fires. He describes the danger, the thrill, the deviousness, the recklessness, but above all, the companionship. He writes of amiable walks in sunlight hours, and smoke flavored discussions in evening gaslight, and wordless demonstrations of affection in darkness. He pens all the words they cannot say in polite society, and all the emotions they cannot admit, and all the complete and overwhelming love they have for each other, and those pages, those pages will never be published, but now they are written, and, somewhere, they will have happened.

He writes, and while he knows he cannot save one Sherlock Holmes, one John Watson, tonight his sleep will be eased by the knowledge that somewhere, they have not parted.


End file.
